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Not putting your brand name on the door of your business is the same thing as not using a promotional product. The price of NOT using promotional products all but guarantees people will forget you.

The Advertising Specialty Institute, a leading promotional products association, releases an annual impressions study. ASI breaks down the effectiveness of promotional products against other types of advertising, by product, and by demographic. Every single study type drives home the high-value effectiveness of promotional products.

Here are the top 5 ways to not use promotional products to guarantee people forget you:

1. Don’t put your brand logo on a promotional pen that people find in their kitchen drawer, on their desk or in their purse.

On the episode of Friends titled “The One Where Joey Loses His Insurance,” Ross has begun to teach his first-ever college course. He is intent on making the right impression, and starts his very first class by introducing himself with an English accent. The hilarity ensues when Monica and Rachel stop by class one day for lunch and discover the bogus accent. He insists the entire fiasco began all because he wanted to make the right impression.

In the promotional products industry, without careful guidance it can be all too easy to make the wrong impression. Our sales team shared examples of the right way to Make the right impression.™

Right:Hand sanitizer for the hospital or doctor’s officeWrong: Food containing nuts for the hospital or doctor’s office

Right:Branded towels for the local gymWrong: Orca whale stress balls for the local gym

Right: A gift pack including sunglasses, hats and sunscreen for the luxury resort in South Florida.Wrong: Heavy, customized fleece jackets for the luxury resort in South Florida.

I have pretty terrible handwriting to begin with, add the lefty smudging, and it doesn’t make for a pretty thank you note. (Sorry to those of you who have actually received a thank you note from me!) So, with around 50 promotional pens on my desk, I set out on a mission. Find the pen the has the least amount of smudging when used by a left-handed person.

So, I didn’t test all 50 of them, but I grabbed a sample and honestly had no clue which would come out on top. The winner:

The Eco-Green Paper Barrel Pen had the least amount of smudging out of all the pens that I tested out! And just in time for Earth Day too, right? It’s a sign!

Have you ever heard of the term “newsjacking?”. Before I started here at Pinnacle I was aware of the concept of newsjacking, even if I didn’t have the term for it. If you’ve never heard of this pop-culture second style of marketing, let’s pause while I send you over the ever -helpful folks over at Hubspot who have written a definitive essay-length post about it here. For those who subscribe to the tl;dr style of reading (meaning: too long; didn’t read) newsjacking is exactly what it sounds: hijacking the news.

Now before you start comparing newsjacking to the bus scenes from Speed, it isn’t as life-or-death as it sounds. In fact, if you happen to follow any brands on Twitter or Facebook you will have seen it at work with last night’s Oscars. It’s the practice of capitalizing (aka, jumping on the bandwagon) on a popular, cultural moment. It can be anything from a newstory or Jennifer Lawrence’s rather charming face plant from last night. Brand ambassadors will take to the internet linking their product, service, etc. in relation to this story. For example, a shoe company could have taken to twitter to tweet a Jennifer offering her their shoe insoles offering stability and comfort after her fall last night, and by not only tweeting it to her account but adding an Oscar related hashtag it’s easily viewed by millions. Just take a look at the general Oscar’s hashtag on Twitter: you’ll notice companies have used it even more so than regular users! My person favorite newsjackers have to be the people behind Oreo’s social media presence. For my SuperBowl post, I made a brief mention about how quickly the got their “you can still dunk the dark” image up on the web minutes after the lights had gone out at the stadium. It was the perfect example of what newsjacking should be: relevant and witty.

I could also give you dozens of examples of what newsjacking shouldn’t be, but you’ve probably heard about these massive fails before: like the Onion taking their trademark parody and snark too far last night with a tasteless remark about one of the youngest nominated atendees of the night and then their subsequent apologizing this morning (read more here). Maybe you can recall the all apologizing Kenneth Cole is still doing about their own remark about the Arab Spring? These are the cautionary tales and are all companies that can take a lesson from Oreo. Newsjacking should put you in the news as well, unless the world of marketing is praising your flawless execution of a news jack.

Newsjacks are easily translatable into promotional products. Say a celebrity has been sighted littering by throwing away a single use plastic bottle, wouldn’t it be a great time to send you customers (if you happen to know they are into celebrity news that is) a reusable water bottle with a little note and send out a well placed tweet, or remind people to vote with a Facebook post and a custom pen? Opportunities are limitless and the best think about newsjacking is that if at first you don’t suceed: there will always be new news tomorrow to try again.

The image I added at the top of this post is just a little newsjacking flowchart I messily made as I was thinking how to structure this post (as you can tell, I’m more than a little fond of the Paul Frank monkey and colored pens), you could take the same style and approach for the next big pop culture event and just jot down moments that you can quickly transition over to you social media. Have you ever tried out a newsjack? How did it go, let me know the comments!

If you frequent your local coffee shop or take a look around when you are waiting for the train, you’ll see the next big trend that we’re seeing… “Urban Gear”. With our dependence on a life in motion, we now have access to apparel and products that keep our gear (smartphone, tablet, mp3, headphones, etc) safe and stylish.

It seems I can’t sit through a stop light without checking my phone or fiddling with my music selection. I guess you could say I’m pretty connected at all times! I love finding products with practical, smart design that support my tech habits. If your target audience is anything like me, you’ll need to check out some of my favorite Urban Gear products:

The Men’s Sherpa Fleece Lined Seam-Sealed Jacket is waterproof and features a audio port and convenient breast pocket for your phone or mp3. Available in a female companion as well.

The Impact Vertical Computer Messenger Bag comes in gray or black and features a padded exterior pocket that fits up to a 15.4″ laptop. Mesh side pocket holds your drink.

The RoxBox Bluetooth Speaker turns any mobile device into a sound machine. The built in mic comes in handy for a conference call on the go. Love this edgy speaker!

The Techie Headphones feature a sleek design and a fold up feature which makes it easy to travel with. With Beats by Dr. Dre being a hot item this holiday, we’re seeing lots of headphones in 2013.

Welcome to the second edition in my blog series featuring promotional product ideas for each of the distinctive regions of the United States. Last week’s post focused on West Coast promotional products and this week’s theme is promo items for the Midwestern states.

Smart promotional product companies know that one size doesn’t fit all. As with any marketing campaign, the 4Ps (price, place, product, promotion) play an integral role in determining what strategy should be employed to achieve optimal results. This series of blog posts focuses on the “place” component of this popular framework and each entry will include promo product ideas for cities within distinct regions of the United States.